Be honest. What have you learned from the first two presidential debates? Do you expect to be any more enlightened by Wednesday night's third and final showdown between Barack Obama and John McCain?

If you're like my friends and associates outside the newsroom, you're setting the bar pretty low. If these "debates" have proven anything, they confirm our two-party choice is dumb and dumber (you pick).

Three months before the current market meltdown, the Wall Street Journal carried this headline: "The State of the Union? Furious." When the ever-bullish Bible of U.S. capitalism acknowledges that the natives are restless, you know things are serious.

But the Journal, like the rest of the mainstream media (MSM), persists in the notion that America's political duopoly - fronted and funded by the same racketeers who got us into this mess - can deliver solutions.

While the press works itself into its quadrennial lather, thinking Americans wearily ask, "Is this the best there is?"

Sure, voter registration is up, but some of the biggest gains have been among independents. And with a dozen states investigating charges of fraudulent sign-up scams by ACORN, the Democratic numbers look increasingly suspicious.

Yes, "Maverick" McCain wrapped up the Republican nomination, but it was Ron Paul who raised more than $30 million from grass-roots sources via the Internet.

Yeah, "Messiah" Obama preaches "change," but can anyone say what that means? His entourage of Carter- and Clinton-era holdovers doesn't exactly exude freshness.

Fact is, there's hardly a dime's worth of difference between Obama and McCain when it comes to dealing with the metastasizing credit crisis. Both supported the widely unpopular and apparently ineffective $700 billion bailout. Neither has a clue about what to do next. Some choice.

In another dispatch, the Journal declared, without substantiation, that "the electorate has shown little appetite for third-party candidates."

For this, the political scribes can pat themselves on the back. By serving as handmaidens for Democratic and Republican spin doctors, they suck the oxygen right out of democracy. The media's treatment of Paul, a former Libertarian standard bearer, epitomized the bigotry. Though he was the lone Republican presidential candidate to speak authoritatively on the crumbling domestic economy and America's economic imperialism overseas, the Texas congressman received only token coverage.

Likewise, Ralph Nader - widely credited/castigated for single-handedly defeating Al Gore in 2000 - gets the bum's rush. Agree with him or not, Nader isn't afraid to challenge the oil industry in ways that corporate politicians never have and never will.

For decades, he's assailed nuclear energy, Wall Street speculators and the Israeli lobby - all issues that the Republicrats still won't touch. Or how about someone - anyone - who would represent the public by taking a seriously hard line on illegal immigration?

It would be refreshing to see such views on display Wednesday night. Alas, corporatism's grip on politics is so tight that Anheuser-Busch (now Belgian-based InBev) helps bankroll the "debates," which Nader refers to as a series of "parallel interviews."

Keeping their cozy duopoly game going, former heads of the Republican and Democratic parties who run the debate commission dictate arbitrary thresholds for inclusion (typically 10 to 15 percent in a set of prescribed opinion polls). This is an impossible Catch-22 in a prevailing news blackout, unless you're a multibillionaire like Ross Perot, who bought his way onto the stage.

The irony is that Nader (running on the Ecology Party ballot line in Florida) wages a national campaign while the Republicans and Democrats pick their spots, based on polling and probability of success. Five weeks before Election Day, McCain pulled out of Michigan, the eighth biggest state.

"We have a one-party system designed by the parties," Nader said this spring in the shadow of Philadelphia's historic Independence Hall. Would the Founding Fathers be impressed with what's onstage at Hofstra University Wednesday night? I'm betting they'd vote independent.

Can't improve on that. I like how hard the media is working to uncover the economic culprits too. Don't tell me they don't know who is running this railroad. We're so screwed.
Third parties might impress me if they weren't all fighting for the same piece of pie.

If you're like my friends and associates outside the newsroom, you're setting the bar pretty low. If these "debates" have proven anything, they confirm our two-party choice is dumb and dumber (you pick).

The problem is that there are fundamental differences between, say, Ralph Nader and Bob Barr. How could they be in the same party?

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They are more interested in personal advancement than the good of he country. It's almost as if they provide several different release points for all the anger to bleed out of. I really hoped Hillary was going third party this year but apparently she's in too deep too.

The problem is that there are fundamental differences between, say, Ralph Nader and Bob Barr. How could they be in the same party?

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They couldn't. That's a main problem with 3rd parties. Not enough support nationwide. Face it, Americans are programmed from birth that there are two political parties. The last 3rd party to win, IRCC, was Abraham Lincoln.

Then you get Kucinich on one side and Paul on the other both claiming to be Libertarians, and end up with Bob Barr on the ticket.

There's no concerted grassroots efforts put forth until the last minute by 3rd parties.

Even if a 3rd party won, Congress would just emasculate the Executive Branch. Look at Jimmy Carter. he wasn't even 3rd party, just a Washington outsider and his own party turned on him.

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